Making money online can be a challenge and it is easy to get confused as to what can work well for you. Affiliate marketing offers a great opportunity for almost anyone to earn income online however there are some key things you must remember in order to succeed long term with this strategy. Picking the right products to sell is very important as the unfortunate reality is that most affiliate products are not worth promoting and are not profitable for most people. You need to be selective about various affiliate products since most merchants simply do not credit affiliates properly so learn to operate in the right niches that have profitable affiliate products in them.

Testing is Key:

Do not throw all your money into testing one affiliate product. A good strategy can be to run a small test of even twenty dollars say using pay per click advertising. If you break even or run a profit then you can be more aggressive and spend more money if you want. Test multiple products and you will find that some convert far better than others so stick with the winners and dump the losers. Where can you find good affiliate products to sell? Well, there are many places including Clickbank, Commission Junction, Linkshare as well as several other smaller affiliate networks.

There are various affiliate marketing models you can follow including the pay per sale model where you get a commission for each sale and the pay per lead model where you get a commission for each qualified lead you send to the merchant. Do both as they each have their benefits and disadvantages. Clickbank is a good place to start for beginners however there is a lot of competition so you need to know the right way to promote those products in order to be successful. Traffic is the key to affiliate marketing success and you need to know how to get the right kind of traffic for the right price. Using the right pay per click advertising sources is important and probably the best place to start is Google adwords. Even though adwords can be more expensive, on average the quality of traffic is higher and converts better than other ppc networks.

It is important to also test various different niches as you will find that some niches offer much better returns than others so promote a wide variety of niche affiliate products so you can find the ones that work best for you. Promoting product name based searches on ppc networks can be a good strategy as this kind of traffic is much more targeted and offers the best returns on average however make sure that the product name is not trademarked and that you have the right permissions to bid on those keywords. Clickbank is usually a good place to find brand name searched keywords that are legitimate to bid on through pay per click so do your keyword research using free tools like the Google keyword tool external which will give you a solid idea of whether there are enough searchers to justify setting up a campaign to promote that product.

Author Bio: Marla is a researcher and writer. Visit her site where you can learn about some of the best home business ideas. Also be sure to check out the section on affiliate marketing tips as a great way to earn extra income.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: affiliate marketing tips, how to make money, internet business tips